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Erik Torenberg pfp
Erik Torenberg
@erik
Why are there so many leftists within crypto? As Solana says in his bankless episode, crypto disintermediates and reduces the power of the state. I get why libertarians and rightists like crypto, but why leftists? Leftists should want state power to enact leftist policy goals if they care about leftist outcomes.
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Thumbs Up
@thumbsup.eth
There’s a whole lot of left libertarians in the world. After all socialists literally invented the word that neoliberals co-opted to effectively mean laissez faire capitalist. I think that’s where the confusion comes from: a deep misunderstanding of leftism built on the assumption that it is equivalent to being statists; and argument that weirdly doesn’t get made about those on the right, even when they’re explicit about increasing state power. I’ve written a fair bit about this as has @tbsocialist (he literally wrote a book on the subject) so you can start there if you’re genuinely curious. In essence, we would argue that crypto’s permissionless nature makes it great for free association, fundraising, and mutual aid. These are core tenets of leftism. Community currencies, cooperative ownership, potential to improve workplace and civil democratic participation (and even enable liquid democracy) are things we look optimistically toward. To say nothing of undermining militarism backed fiat
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Stuart
@olystuart
Well said, I agree. I'd add one main thing. Marxists believe that a strong Socialist State is necessary in the transition period out of capitalism. This is because the world we live in is full of entrenched powers and forces of wealth centralization that wage class war against the rest of us and would not peacefully give up their hoarded wealth to the commons. Long term, leftists would build a world where power is decentralized and society is optimized for freedom of people to do what they want (besides re-centralize power / hoard wealth). 100 $degen
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rathermercurial
@rathermercurial.eth
Personally my goal is to help cultivate such immense dual power as to make the dictatorship of the Proletariat obsolete. Both counter revolutionaries and commies can't be trusted IMO.
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@thumbsup.eth
I phrased this differently but I agree with your sentiment about dual power. I don’t believe in a Vanguard party. That said, our friend didn’t mention Lenin so I think they’re referencing only classical Marxism not its offspring. In that conception there would be no vanguard, only federated democracy with the tools of the state at their disposal. There is some sense to that, though I have long since changed my opinion to be in favour of finding an alternate path to the same outcomes. https://warpcast.com/thumbsup.eth/0x4d559bec
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rathermercurial
@rathermercurial.eth
Same. I guess I'm a filthy revisionist by I'm with Engels on this. Bloodless, constitutional revolution is possible if we upgrade our democracy to facilitate collective intelligence, secure the voting mechanism and enable trustless execution of decisions. Not saying there won't be counterrevolution, nor that the people don't have the right to revolt if needed. Just that our coordination capacity has improved since Marx's time.
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Stuart
@olystuart
Well said, I think you're right. 100 $degen
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